The Oracle and the Family Curse

by Liz Greene

The Centre for Psychological Astrology CPA offers all six issues of the journal "Apollon" for free. Visit www.cpalondon.com to download the PDF files.

In 1969, when Senator Edward Kennedy faced the collapse of his Presidential
hopes after Chappaquiddick, he asked whether there was a curse on
his family. Over the decades, a great many people have asked the
same question, privately and in print; the history of this extraordinary
clan does make one wonder whether some daimon of misfortune dogs
its members. The recent death of John F. Kennedy Jr. has once again
roused speculation about why the male Kennedys seem to be picked
off like wooden ducks in a fairground booth, not to mention the
drug-related hospitalisations, virulent divorces, and other human
messes which, although more private and less florid, are perhaps
no less tragic for those involved. No generation of this powerful
family has remained unscathed. Naturally, the Kennedy horoscopes
have been
pondered by astrologers from every perspective. Anyone who has studied
them can recognise factors in each individual birth chart which
might reflect, at least in part, the tragedy of that particular
life. Yet here is a sequence of tragedies which are strangely coherent
in their continuity. Can we link these astrologically? Do they make
sense psychologically? Are we looking at what the Greeks meant by
a family curse? Are we looking at the products of a lethal but very
human mixture of ingredients - a dysfunctional family driven by
obsessive ambition and habitually involved with echelons of power
and corruption that, sooner or later, would involve danger and possibly
violent death? Are we viewing coincidence? Or, as Ian Fleming would
have suggested, is it "enemy action"? And if so, what, and where,
is the enemy?

The word "curse" conjures up images of witchcraft, black magic,
Dennis Wheatley novels, and B-grade films about reanimated Egyptian
mummies. It is a word which, understandably, we do not like to use
these days, and any mention of the Curse of the Kennedys tends to
provoke uneasy laughter. But the ancient mythology which underpins
our Western culture and permeates our Western psychology took the
concept of the family curse very seriously indeed, and did not associate
it with witches or malevolent occult rites. The English word "curse"
has obscure origins, but my etymological dictionary suggests that
it derives from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning "wrath". The first known
example of the word occurs in the 11th century: Goddes curs, the
wrath of God. A curse is thus something inflicted by a wrathful
deity in response to human wrong-doing. Its roots lie in the past,
but it predetermines the future. Most of us do not think in terms
of our families being "cursed", whatever difficulties we experience
with and through them. Some families exhibit clearly repetitive
patterns, but these may involve gifts and good fortune as often
as they involve misfortune and pathology. But there are some families
which seem to bear more than their share of tragedy, albeit on a
less grandiose scale than the Kennedys. Repeating generations of
broken marriages, alcoholism and drug addiction, suicide, financial
ruin, and functional disease dog many families. Sometimes these
patterns are deeply disturbing in their consistency and precision.
Lynn Bell demonstrates, in her excellent book, Planetary Threads,
the ways in which particular attitudes and experiences, embedded
in the family psyche, can unconsciously dominate behaviour over
several generations, sometimes emerging only when each individual
reaches the precise age at which his or her predecessors themselves
re-enacted the ancient story. Family therapists call this "the anniversary
syndrome". Astrologers, accustomed to the cyclical nature of transits
and progressions, can map it with precision, but its meaning may
be more elusive.

An important question for the astrologer is whether family tragedies
can be seen in nascent form in the birth chart, and counteracted
before they have a chance to repeat. For if we take seriously the
possibility of a destructive psychological inheritance, we are forced
to consider the implications for astrological prediction. A family
curse, in myth, demands an expiation of some kind, without which
it continues to unleash its wrath on subsequent generations. The
future of an individual, in this context, is dependent not on his
or her conscious choices, nor even on his or her birth chart, but
on something from the past which lies buried beneath the surface
of life and influences or conditions future choices and consequences.
In
other words, the family curse makes us live the placements in our
individual charts in particular ways which are not entirely our
own. Our special pattern of planets and signs and aspects, so unique
and so full of individual potential, becomes the unwitting vessel
for a larger, older, and often inimical collective daimon. John
F. Kennedy, before he went to Dallas in November 1963, was reputed
to have received many warnings, amongst them several from astrologers
who did not like the look of the configurations being triggered
in his birth chart. He chose to disregard these warnings. John F.
Kennedy Jr., before he took his fatal flight in July 1999, was warned
not to attempt it in the prevailing bad weather conditions, especially
in light of his inexperience and his injured foot. He chose to disregard
this warning. Is "chose" perhaps the wrong word to use here? Later
I will look very briefly at John Kennedy's chart, as well as those
of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., Robert Kennedy, and John F. Kennedy Jr.
First I would like to explore in greater depth just what the Greeks
might have meant by the family curse, and how this could be relevant
to us psychologically and as a pattern of destiny within a family.

The family curse in Greek myth

In Greek myth, the family curse is presented as a punishment inflicted
by an angry deity on the descendants of an individual who has offended
that god. The curse or punishment is also intimately connected with
Apollo's oracle, and most of the family curses in myth involve one
or another member of the family consulting the oracle for help or
a revelation about the future. The curse, although a legacy from
the past, is also a destiny, and involves prophecies of what is
to come. It has the power to overrule any potential individual development,
rendering the person a mere vehicle for the unfolding of the curse.
Only in understanding the words of the oracle, accepting the fate
decreed, and performing expiation according to the god's will, can
the curse be lifted or neutralised. Inevitably, the figures of Greek
tragedy neither understand nor accept the oracle, nor do they perform
the expiation required. Each person is either ignorant of the curse
or feels he or she is exempt, and thus meets a destiny which is
both imposed and chosen - inherited consequences interwoven with
present choices to create a predetermined future.

For example, the curse imposed upon the mythic house of Thebes begins
with King Laius, who manages to offend both Apollo and Artemis,
the divine protectors of children, by raping a noble youth who is
the son of his friend. Laius is warned by the oracle of the god
he has offended that, should he have a son, he will meet his death
at this son's hands. The wrathful deity, although ready to inflict
punishment, also simultaneously offers the possibility of expiation
through that punishment. Since every human must meet death one way
or another, and given the nature of Laius' offence, the expiation
might be seen as just. Laius, however, will not accept the sentence.
He interprets the oracle as a warning rather than an opportunity
for expiation, and attempts to avoid the punishment by avoiding
intercourse with his wife. But his shame makes him secretive, and
he neglects to tell her the reason for his sudden aversion to the
marital bed. Because Jocasta is ignorant of the real cause of the
rejection, her feminine pride is offended, and she seduces him while
he is drunk. She becomes pregnant, and when the child is born, Laius
again tries to cheat the oracle by leaving the newborn boy on a
hillside to die. The deities' wrath is thus compounded, and the
entire city of Thebes now comes under their curse in the form of
the monstrous Sphinx.

The child is, of course, Oedipus, whose name means "swollen foot"
because his father,
determined that he should die of exposure, has nailed his feet to
the ground with a spike. But Oedipus is rescued by a kind shepherd
and survives, and spends his youth believing he is the son of the
King and Queen of Corinth. Then he, like his father, consults Apollo's
oracle, which informs him that he will become his father's murderer
and the husband of his mother. The possibility of expiation is no
longer offered. Because Laius has exacerbated the gods' wrath by
compounding his crimes, the curse has crystallised into an irrevocable
future. Oedipus, like his father, tries to flout the oracle, flees
Corinth, and runs straight into the arms of his destiny - a destiny
which is both irrevocable and self-architected. Here is a strange
blend of hubris (an arrogant effort to cheat the gods), innate character
(he kills Laius on the road in a fit of uncontrollable temper because
the unknown older man has blocked his way and spoken to him in an
abusive fashion), heroism (he courageously confronts the Sphinx
and breaks the curse imposed on Thebes, thereby winning both the
kingship and, unwittingly, his mother, as a reward), and a genuine
wish to remain a decent human being. Yet even Oedipus' terrible
expiation does not alleviate the curse, for after he blinds himself
and dies outcast, the curse moves on to his children. It is only
when every member of the House of Thebes is dead that the curse
is at last spent. This mythic family inheritance is shocking in
its relentless brutality. Yet we can see that individual choice
and individual consciousness are as relevant to the outcome as the
workings of deity and the predeterminants of the past.

There are certain consistent features which appear in every myth
about a family curse. In a way, they form the criteria for what
defines a family curse. These features may help us to understand
what we are looking at psychologically.

The individual who first activates the curse is
invariably royal, descended from a god, and blessed or gifted
by a god. He or she is never merely ordinary, but has received
some special boon from the deity. The wrath of the deity is thus
linked not with mere human trangression, but with the abuse of
a god-given talent or advantage. In other words, the curse is
not a curse from the outset, but begins as something positive
and creative which has been misused or distorted through arrogance,
greed, or cruelty. Since the gift of a god is a symbol of the
god's nature translated into human form, the curse is really an
inversion of something divine within, an abuse of that which is
a property of one's own soul.

The individual is afflicted by hubris - a disrespect
for mortal limits and the conditions and requirements for living
imposed by the gods. Hubris is, in effect, arrogance of a special
and deadly kind. Although it contains elements of courage and
heroism, it is nevertheless a repudiation of that deeper religious
sense which acknowledges with humility the gifts and benefits
which life bestows.

The curse is usually linked with the abuse of
children. We need to view this symbolically, as the abuse of creative
potentials, although it may also be relevant literally; every
sociologist and social worker knows that child abuse within families
tends to have long-lasting repercussions over the generations.
In the myth, Laius rapes a youth, and then exacerbates the curse
by exposing his own son to die. Tantalus, in the myth of the curse
of the House of Atreus, cuts up his son and serves him as a meal
to the gods, merely to test them. His sons, Atreus and Thyestes,
in turn destroy their own children as a means of revenge upon
each other; and Agamemnon, the son of Atreus, in turn destroys
his daughter in order to gain victory in the Trojan War. Each
subsequent generation of this tortured family is involved in some
form of calllous injury to or destruction of a child or young
person.

The members of the family who inherit the curse
exacerbate it through their own hubris. Each generation has the
opportunity to expiate the curse by accepting the punishment,
but each generation fails to do so because the individual cannot
resist indulging in greed, anger, or desire for personal vengeance.
The curse therefore becomes more powerful and more all-encompassing.
What is really inherited is a particular set of attitudes which
the individual does not wish to relinquish or transform, resulting
in a blind wallowing in instinctual responses and a refusal to
make necessary sacrifices or impose internal limits - even when
warned by the god. It is, in effect, putting the self before the
Self when the chips are really down.

The oracle always warns the perpetrator or inheritor
of the curse about the consequences, but the terms of the oracle
are wilfully misunderstood, or there is a determined attempt to
avoid the prophecy. The attempt to cheat the oracle paradoxically
results in the fulfilment of the oracle.

In viewing psychologically inherited patterns
from a mythic perspective, I am not attributing some literally supernatural
agency to the kind of repeating sorrows which so often plague families.
Rather, I am thinking symbolically. The features listed above suggest
that the family curse is a psychologically predetermined set of
behaviour patterns which require consciousness and inner struggle
if any kind of transformation or expiation is to occur. We inherit
not only our ancestors' genetic blueprints, but also certain deeply
entrenched emotional and mental perspectives. Perhaps we also inherit
certain complexes - inherent "stories" or archetypal enactments
which are not, in themselves, malevolent, and may involve gifts
and talents of a special kind. These inherent family perspectives
and archetypal patterns are not difficult to trace in the horoscope.
We can glimpse their outlines in the parental significators in a
birth chart, and in the repetition of signs, planetary aspects and
house placements which are so common in every family. These patterns
are not in themselves suggestive of a "curse", but anything in the
birth chart can behave like a curse if it has been handled destructively
or wilfully suppressed for many generations. It is not clear just
how we inherit these things. Dedicated geneticists would suggest
that human character, like the human body, is a matter of DNA, and
if alcoholism or depression runs in our family, we stand a good
chance of becoming alcoholic or depressed because it is in the genes.
At the other extreme, archetypal psychology postulates the reality
of the family unconscious and the unity of the collective psyche
of which every individual is a part. Perhaps the truth lies in a
combination of the two. But whatever the means of inheritance, physical,
psychic or both, something seems to pass down the generations in
response to the repeated abuse of some natural law. This "something"
appears to have a morality of its own, whether we attribute this
morality to God, the psyche, the Self, the instincts, Nature, or
life itself.

The Curse of the Kennedys

A brief summary of the Kennedy tragedies can help us to see how
aptly the suffering of this family fits the criteria for the Greek
family curse. The patriarch of the family, Joseph P. Kennedy, rose
to a position of enormous power and wealth during the 1920's and
'30's, much of which was acquired through bootlegging and other
questionable means. Glenn Richter, in an article written after the
death of John F. Kennedy Jr., suggests that the Curse of the Kennedys
is simple arrogance, exhibited in equal quantities by each generation.
His assessment of Joe Kennedy is damning: "...All it took was a
little help from his good friend FDR and plenty of nerve, something
Papa Joe had in abundance. How else could he keep consorting with
crooks and still
hold his head high in high society? How else could he keep callously
canoodling with sexy screen sirens while his wife stayed home cranking
out more Kennedys? Papa Joe was not exactly what you'd call a nice
guy." Here is the gifted individual of Greek myth, favoured by the
gods with a heady mix of audacity, determination, charm, and political
brilliance. However, "Papa" Joe was clearly afflicted with hubris
in the best Greek sense. His eldest daughter Rosemary, born in 1918,
was a happy and good-natured child. But she was mildly retarded,
and was a source of enormous social discomfort to her father. He
seems to have been incapable of accepting her as she was and counting
his many blessings. In consequence he ordered a lobotomy performed
on her in 1941, when she was twenty-three years old. The operation
went badly wrong. This once contented and sweet-tempered girl emerged
severely retarded, and was consigned by her embarrassed father to
an institution for the rest of her life. The deities of Greek myth
do not appear to concern themselves with garden-variety transgressions
such as bootlegging and adultery; after all, they indulge in such
pastimes themselves. But if these were characters in a Greek tragedy,
we would be told in no uncertain terms that Joe Kennedy, in destroying
his daughter, set something in motion which would have terrible
consequences down the generations. Perhaps equally destructive was
his obsessive ambition to produce a son who would be President.
On a subtler level that, too, is a form of child abuse, for his
children were given no opportunity whatsoever to become themselves.
Obsessive ambition, already overweening long before Joe Kennedy
was born, ensured that every individual's unique potentials were
swallowed up by the family daimon. I do not pretend to know whether
the cosmos truly carries such a stern morality as the Greeks believed
in. In the context of our more simplistic and highly personalised
Judaeo-Christian morality, the Greek conception of the universe
may seem shockingly impersonal. But if we consider the list of features
of the family curse I have given above, it is clear that Joe Kennedy
faithfully met Criteria Nos. 1, 2 and 3.

Does this really mean that his "sin" would inevitably be "punished"
down the generations? I am not suggesting this, nor do I personally
believe life is that simple. The world is full of extremely nasty
pieces of work who live long and destructive lives and die self-satisfied
in their beds, while many good, decent people encounter terrible
experiences which neither they nor their ancestors have merited.
Moreover, not all tragedies form part of a repeating ancestral pattern.
When they do, however, we need to sit up and take notice. Let us
bear in mind Criterion No. 4, and consider in brief the unfoldment
of the chain of tragedies which has afflicted the Kennedy family.
This short list does not include issues such as divorce, adultery,
alcoholism, and other family pastimes which are sufficiently common
not to merit the term "tragedy" except, perhaps, to the individual
participants.

Joseph P. Kennedy Jr, Joe's eldest son.,
the great hope of his father for the American Presidency, is killed
in a plane crash in 1944, aged twenty-nine.

John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the US,
is assassinated in Dallas in November 1963, aged forty-six.

John F. Kennedy's son, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy,
born prematurely to the President and his wife in 1963, dies three
months before his father's assassination.

Robert F. (Bobby) Kennedy, Joe's third son,
is assassinated in June 1968, aged forty-two.

Edward M. (Ted) Kennedy, Joe's youngest
son, drives a car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island in July
1969, after a party. His aide, Mary Jo Kopechne, is found dead
in the submerged car. His political career has not survived the
speculation surrounding the incident.

Bobby Kennedy's son Joseph is involved in
1973 in a car accident which leaves a female passenger paralysed
for life.

Ted Kennedy's son, Edward Jr., has his right
leg amputated in 1973 because of cancer.

Bobby Kennedy's son David dies in 1984 of
a drug overdose.

Ted Kennedy's son Patrick is treated for
cocaine addiction in 1986.

Ted Kennedy's nephew, William Kennedy Smith,
is acquitted of rape in 1991.

Bobby Kennedy's son Michael is killed in
a skiing accident in December 1997, aged thirty-nine.

John F. Kennedy's only surviving son, JFK
Jr., dies in a plane crash in July 1999 (exactly thirty years
after Chappaquiddick), aged thirty-eight.

Even given the fact that there are a great
many Kennedys and that therefore, statistically, their chances for
a list of tragedies such as this are greater, the males in this
family do seem to have suffered more than their share of catastrophes
and early deaths. Could all these people have been afflicted, with
Criterion No. 4 - with hubris, a refusal to alter the inherently
destructive or arrogant attitudes which are part of their psychological
inheritance? We could certainly say this about some, if not all,
of them. Even JFK Jr., who eschewed the political limelight and
seems to have been a well-liked and relatively innocuous individual,
insisted on flying his plane with a broken foot and in weather conditions
that would daunt even an experienced pilot. It is
unnecessary to elaborate on the kind of world in which John F. Kennedy
and Bobby Kennedy moved; one does not need to postulate family curses
to recognise that members of the Mafia tend to shoot people when
they are crossed and, just possibly, so do members of the American
military, the FBI, and the CIA. And ambition, power, and great wealth
can generate their own kind of curse. We do not need to imagine
some dark ancestral daimon to understand why cocaine addiction or
alcoholism might afflict a member of this family. Taken individually,
each tragedy is explicable in its own, very human terms. Taken together,
they present a rather more disturbing picture.

The horoscopes

If I were to peruse a horoscope for traces of what I understand
as a family curse, I would consider first of all the presence of
planets in those houses concerned with inheritance from the past.
Until we have some insight into the complexes belonging to the larger
matrix from which we have emerged, we are liable to suffer from
unconscious compulsions and behaviour patterns which may reflect
our own characters only in part. Family complexes underpin all the
buried feelings which colour the psychic atmosphere in childhood,
and as determining patterns they form part of our ancestral inheritance.
My analytic work has taught me that nothing is quite as powerful
as a family secret nursed in the darkness for many generations,
accruing energy and "wrath" in proportion to the ferocity with which
it is blocked from conscious awareness and expression. Family ghosts
may not take the form of dead Uncle Fred speaking through a medium.
But they are very real and very powerful, and they can haunt us
as relentlessly as the Furies did Orestes. Astrologically, planets
in the 4th, 8th and 12th may suggest energies, patterns and qualities
which are inherited but which need individual consciousness to release
their most positive dimensions. Left unconscious, they may release
more destructive dimensions, impelling the individual into compulsive
behaviour which results in events which feel "fated". The parental
significators - planets placed in the 10th or 4th or conjuncting
the MC or IC from the 9th or 3rd - may also be important in understanding
the family inheritance. And I would place considerable importance
on the position of Pluto in the horoscope, paying particular attention
to Pluto on an angle, placed in the 4th, 8th, or 12th, or in strong
aspect to the Sun or Moon. This planet seems to reflect that "Law
of Nature" for which the Greeks had so much awe and respect - a
kind of instinctive natural justice which serves the survival and
evolution of the species, the group, and the creative daimon of
the family. If a family curse involves some violation of natural
law by earlier generations, we may expect Pluto be strong in the
horoscope, demanding that the individual face and make peace with
an inheritance from the past which requires reparation. Until this
challenge is met, the individual's own potentials may be partially
or even entirely subsumed by issues that began long before one's
birth.

In "Papa" Joe Kennedy's chart, bearing these factors in mind, I
would view the full 12th house as significant, and also the placement
of Chiron in Cancer at the MC. This chart can obviously be approached
from many different perspectives. I am concerned here not with a
character analysis so much as the indication that Joe Kennedy was
himself the vessel for unresolved inherited psychological issues.
The interpretations which follow are therefore unavoidably brief
and focused on this single point. To me, any planet placed in the
12th describes some impetus, drive or daimon within the ancestral
psyche which has not been sufficiently or fully lived, and which
turns that planet into a kind of medium for what has been left unfinished
from the past. The individual's expression of the planet is therefore
coloured by what previous generations have or have not done with
it. "Left unfinished" does not necessarily mean "destructive"; a
painting may also seem unfinished to its creator although complete
in the eyes of the viewer, and it could be argued that no creative
endeavour is ever really complete in terms of its ultimate potential.
The designs of the family daimon take much longer to unfold than
one individual life. Everything depends on how the individual handles
that unfinished business.

Joe's new Moon placed in the 12th house, with the Sun widely square
Pluto in the 9th, suggests an inheritance involving complex religious
issues as well as an overwhelming drive toward individual expression
and achievement which has somehow not found sufficient expression
in the family background. We may need to go back to Joe's Irish
Catholic ancestry and the years of the Great Hunger to understand
something of what he may have been carrying. Although it would be
easy to view Joe Kennedy as the initiator of the difficulties of
the family, it would seem that he himself was the inheritor of family
complexes which drove him compulsively toward personal power and
achievement. It is as though the voices of long-dead ancestors,
starving and persecuted, pushed him along, demanding that he and
he alone be the redeemer of the family past. Chiron in Cancer at
the MC suggests a wound in relation to his standing in the world,
a wound inherited through the maternal line and linked with his
family's social status. Chiron placed here implies that he suffered
from a profound sense of himself and his family being unacceptable
and inferior in the world in which he moved. The compensation for
this kind of wound is often obsessive ambition - although the real
motive is not material gain, but an attempt to assuage a much deeper
emotional suffering. We may also view his treatment of his daughter
in the light of this Chiron placement, for she must have seemed
to him the living proof of his family's inferiority. That Joe Kennedy
was determined to father the first Irish Catholic President in a
nation which tends to like its Presidents unambiguously Anglo-Saxon
and Protestant sheds light on how desperately important the religious
issue must have been. What I believe this chart does not show is
how Joe Kennedy elected to use the talents and energy he had at
his disposal, nor with what ethics - or lack thereof - he attempted
to fulfil the ambitions which were fuelled by something so much
older and vaster than his own personal Virgoan dreams. Here is choice
rather than destiny, and arrogance rather than an honouring of the
enormous talents and life-force at his disposal. In light of this
chart, the Kennedy family curse appears to have begun not with "Papa"
Joe, but in the collective struggle of Irish against English, Catholic
against Protestant, and the tragedy of the Great Hunger a century
and a half before this man was even born.

In John F. Kennedy's chart it is the 8th house,
rather than the 12th, which carries the emphasis. This is, to me,
no less a house of family ghosts. But the ghosts do not quietly
and surreptitiously possess planets in the 8th; their haunting is
more precipitous and often enacted through ferocious compulsions
and dramatic events. Here, too, is portrayed the unhappy family
inheritance carried through the maternal line, reflected by Saturn
in Cancer at the MC conjunct Neptune in Leo. This echoes Joe's 10th
house Chiron in Cancer, and implies an enormous unease in terms
of worldly position and acceptability, as well as a powerful messianic
need to be the redeemer of his family and country. We might wonder
how such an apparently confident and well-loved man could ever have
ever worried about being inferior and coming from inferior stock.
But what do we really know about him? And what did he really know
about himself? We are told that he was sexually driven, that he
could not resist flirting with some of the darkest criminal elements
in American society, that he could be ruthless and manipulative
like his father, and that, whether he wished to or not, he was driven
from the moment of his brother's death to aim for the Presidency
and the fulfilment of the family dream. I do not interpret planets
in the 8th as indicators of a "violent death". I have had too many
clients who have lived to ripe ages with full 8th houses to interpret
the subtleties of Pluto's world on such a literal level. But planets
in the 8th suggest powerful unconscious forces of an impersonal
or nonpersonal kind, usually linked to secrets in the family past,
which erupt into the daylight world in the form of compulsions and
crises which demand a relinquishing of control and an acceptance
of the invisible dimensions of life. The 8th can convey great power,
strength, and insight, if the conscious attitude is humble. But
if there is too much arrogance and a refusal to look within, then
planets here may sometimes behave like avenging Furies - or like
"enemy action". Like his father, John Kennedy was disinclined to
do any relinquishing of any kind, let alone engage in the kind of
introspection the 8th house requires. Like Atreus and Thyestes,
he followed faithfully in the family footsteps. We do not need to
think in terms of a family curse to see that JFK's political activities
would win him virulent and powerful enemies. But we may need to
think in these terms if we wish to understand why he was driven
to such activities. The Sun conjunct Venus in Gemini, with Libra
on the Ascendant and the Moon in Virgo, all suggest a flexible,
refined, and easy-going nature. This chart makes me think of a wolf
in sheep's clothing; but the wolf is not the man himself. Rather,
it is the family inheritance.

Bobby Kennedy's horoscope presents us with
Pluto in a position of power, virtually exactly at the IC in Cancer.
Here it is not diffuse ancestral ghosts so much as father writ large
and archetypal - a dark Plutonian inheritance coming down through
the father's line. The 10th house is heavily tenanted, but by a
benign stellium of Moon-Venus-Jupiter. Bobby was probably far more
comfortable enjoying money, power, and status than his brother and
father. But Jupiter and Venus oppose Pluto, suggesting a ferocious
inner struggle between his individual nature and his inheritance
which turned him into a fanatical crusader against evil in the world.
One wonders whether the dark forces he hunted in society, and which
ultimately destroyed him, were really the dark forces at his own
roots. On some level I believe Bobby Kennedy deeply hated and feared
his father, but projected this Plutonian figure onto the criminal
elements he perceived gnawing away at the roots of American society.
Uranus and Chiron are in the 12th, although Chiron is close to the
Ascendant; bitter family wounds as well as messianic family ideals
drove him from within. More importantly, the Sun is close to the
8th house cusp, telling a tale similar to that of his brother. His
individual nature and aspirations were constantly invaded by the
unconscious compulsions of the past. Insight and humility are required
for the Sun to shine its light from the 8th. But a Kennedy upbringing
does not usually encourage insight and humility. As a Scorpio, Bobby
may also have been driven by a spirit of personal vengeance, and
this craving for vengeance, common to so many figures in Greek myth,
is not conducive to making peace with a wrathful deity or easing
the strictures of a family curse. But most of all, it is the angular
Pluto which suggests the intrusion of the ancestral past into the
present. Had the father not appeared as a figure of such compulsive
power in this chart, much might have been different. Politics might
well have been Bobby's choice as well as his family's. But he might
not have invoked the enemy without quite so virulently if he had
understood better the nature of the enemy within.

Finally, we can look very briefly at the chart
of John F. Kennedy Jr. No compulsive flirtation with the darker
echelons of power appears to have afflicted him; it seems he truly
did not want to follow in his father's footsteps, but was content
to live the pleasant Jupiterian life of a playboy and dilettante.
The 10th house is empty; evidently he did not feel impelled to change
the world or make his mark on it in any mythic way. We might well
hope that, in relinquishing the voracious demands of the family
daimon, he might have avoided that courtship of a tragic end which
destroyed his father and his uncle. Yet he had a tragic end anyway.
What in the world made this man choose to risk his life, and the
lives of three other people, in such a blind and foolish way? We
cannot ever know what was in his mind - or perhaps more to the point,
what was at work on the unconscious level - when he made this decision.
Uranus and Pluto are placed in the 12th, with Pluto close to the
Ascendant and conjunct the north Node. Once again the family ghosts
make their appearance, colouring his perceptions of the outer world
with the compulsions of the past. Pluto is also square the Sun,
which is in the 3rd but conjunct the cusp of the 4th. It seems that
even this likeable and exuberant puer aeternus was required to grapple
with his Plutonian inheritance if he wished to fulfil his individual
potential. Glenn Richter states in his article that JFK Jr's fatal
flaw was arrogance. No doubt that is partly true; he, too, fits
Criterion No. 4. But there are other factors in this chart (particularly
Venus conjunct Saturn, Mars opposite Saturn, and Moon and Chiron
exactly conjunct) that describe considerable inner pain, loneliness,
and struggle - perhaps not entirely conscious, but all the more
destructive for being so carefully denied.

Pluto was transiting back and forth across JFK Jr's natal Sun in
the year before his death, and it was square its own place and very
close to the IC at the time of his death. Something inescapable
was hunting him from within. The progressed chart is also eloquent;
progressed IC was exactly conjunct progressed Jupiter, suggesting
that the puer spirit longed for a way out of the conflict between
his own personality and the inexorable demands of his inheritance.
What is more peculiar is that this progressed MC-IC axis was in
14º 28' of Cancer-Capricorn, precise to the minute on his uncle
Robert's natal Pluto at the IC - as though some strange identification
was occurring between the living nephew and the dead uncle. Those
who believe in simple tragic accidents may no doubt feel anger at
the suggestion that there might have been something voluntary, something
chosen about this sad death. I am not implying, if there were indeed
a choice, that the choice was conscious. But the precision of such
astrological contacts makes me wonder whether the family daimon
- one dimension of which seems to reveal itself in the family charts
through the Cancer-Capricorn axis - was at it once again. This repetition
of planets falling within a few degrees in the same signs in so
many of the family charts does not suggest a family curse. Rather,
it suggests a family inheritance of a potentially creative kind,
involving not only political shrewdness, tenacity, and leadership
abilities, but also the profound emotional nourishment provided
by close family bonds. However, it might also be said that the gifts
of the Cancer-Capricorn axis was sorely misused in every generation
of the Kennedy family. Global ambition that subsumes the personal
happiness of individual family members, and a tyrannical clannishness
that permits no freedom to move beyond the family circle emotionally,
intellectually, professionally, or spiritually, may be interpreted
as abuses of god-given talents. The Cancer-Capricorn axis, at its
best, epitomises those values which preserve the loving container
of the family as a basis for the structures of a lawful and stable
society. If I were an imaginative ancient Greek, I might think of
the goddess Hera, protectress of family and social bonds, incensed
beyond bearing because her gifts were bestowed so freely and then
used so irresponsibly.

Conclusion

The family curse is, when all is said and done, an inversion of
a family blessing. That is what emerges from thinking long and hard
about how the Greeks portrayed it, and I am convinced that they
knew far more about this unfolding of patterns over generations
than many orthodox schools of psychology do today. Psychoanalysis
and analytical psychology have, of course, always recognised the
reality of the unconscious and the continuing power of family secrets.
Family therapy acknowledges the generational repetition of critical
events on specific dates and at specific ages; the analytical family
therapist knows, too, that the "identified patient", like Orestes,
is the recipient and mouthpiece, rather than the perpetrator, of
a conflict much older than the individual. From a reductive perspective,
the family curse may seem like a doom imposed on the innocent. Yet
our own small family curses, whatever florid or subtle form they
take, may be viewed, not as a future in which we are fated to re-enact
the tragedies of the past, but as an opportunity to redeem something
which was once the gift of a god, but which has been deformed over
time through arrogance, stupidity, malice, or wilful unconsciousness.
When patterns from the past make us shape our futures compulsively,
we will solve nothing by either passively anticipating disaster
or believing ourselves to be exempt. Any individual with a powerful
Pluto or an emphasis in the watery houses is the potential recipient
of enormous power and insight built on a profound comprehension
of the past and the inner world. But there is no such thing as a
free lunch, and one must find the courage to make the heartbreaking
separation from the matrix of the family psyche in full consciousness,
emerging as an individual - lonely, unique, and attuned to the needs
of one's own soul. The luxury of blind identification with the family,
or with any collective, is not an intelligent option for anyone
with such placements in the birth chart. There is no room for either
naivety or arrogance when the chart reveals the participation of
family ghosts. One needs to reflect on the past as carefully and
deeply as possible, for one is, in the most profound sense, a medium
for the unlived gifts of the family psyche and a vessel for all
the energy and life that have been denied or abused and are now
longing to be expressed in new creative forms.

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